FIFA Corruption Scandal: Ex-VP Jack Warner to Reveal All About Soccer Corruption
Former FIFA vice-president and CONCACAF President Jack Warner has said that he will reveal all he knows about corruption at the world soccer body.
In an address on Trinidadian TV on June 3, Jack Warner, who said he feared for his life, also said he could link FIFA officials to general elections in his native Trinidad and Tobago in 2010.
The 72-year-old is one of the 14 people charged by the US over alleged corruption at FIFA.
Another top FIFA official and key witness, American Chuck Blazer, has admitted accepting bribes.
The admissions came in a newly released transcript of Chuck Blazer’s guilty plea from 2013, as part of a wide-ranging US criminal case that has engulfed FIFA and led President Sepp Blatter to resign.
The DoJ alleges the 14 people charged worldwide accepted bribes and kickbacks estimated at more than $150 million over a 24-year period. Four others have already been charged, including Chuck Blazer.
Jack Warner resigned from all soccer activity in 2011 amid bribery allegations and later stepped down as Trinidad and Tobago’s security minister amid a fraud inquiry.
A key figure in the deepening scandal, Jack Warner said he had given lawyers documents outlining the links between FIFA, its funding, himself and the 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago. He said the transactions also included Sepp Blatter.
In the TV address entitled The Gloves Are Off, Jack Warner said: “I will no longer keep secrets for them who actively seek to destroy the country.”
He promised an “avalanche” of revelations to come, speaking to his supporters at a rally later the same day.
Jack Warner, who denies the charges against him and faces extradition to the US, was released on bail after handing himself in to police in the Trinidad and Tobago capital of Port of Spain last week.
He resigned from FIFA’s executive committee in 2011 amid allegations he had bribed his Caribbean associates.
Jack Warner’s address came hours after the details of Chuck Blazer’s 2013 plea bargain came to light, including the admission that he and other officials had accepted bribes in connection with the 2010 World Cup bid, which saw the tournament awarded to South Africa.
On June 4, South African police said they had opened a preliminary investigation into allegations its national soccer association paid a $10 million bribe to host the tournament – a claim the authorities deny.